Earth and Fire
by Ripper101
Summary: Jet's disgust with the Fire Nation is long standing and personal. But Jet died under Lake Laogi, and now he has to return to remember who else he used to be.


**Disclaimer:** I own no rights to the characters, universe and plot devices that derive from 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' and that may be used herein. I mean no offence by posting this and make no money from it.

**A/N:** This is possibly the worst thing one could ever do to Jet.

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><p>He gets in without being caught. In the two years in which he has escaped prison and bounty hunters, in which he has healed and recuperated and gone quietly more sane in an insane kind of way, he has narrowed the whole focus of his world to just this point.<p>

The Fire Nation has an open port and he saunters off ship without a backward glance.

It is nothing difficult to stage a series of small robberies in the houses of the rich and famous. Jet suspects that half of them don't even know they have been robbed.

All he's taken has been some clothes, some shoes. In only one house does he steal several bags of coin, and only because he finds the loot lying on the desk, just begging to be picked up.

He doesn't regret taking those bags of coin. No single move is wasted.

It is even easier to find a scribe with a grudge, a man turned grey and old before his time, hunching over a mug of putrescent liquor and mumbling about the pittance he is paid. So Jet slips the man half a bag of coin and for that he gets someone to tell him how to dress, how to stand, how to walk.

The man is a dry, drunken husk of a human being but he is a hard master. When Jet has learned to sit and stand and walk to his tutor's satisfaction, it is almost time for the final act.

Jet has not been idle in the interim, however. He walks through the city, seemingly at random, sometimes turning up alongside the palace walls, sometimes turning up in the bars where the guards like to drink. The coin buys lavish rounds of drinks and Jet tells a good story- Fire Nation scum are so easy to fool.

He finds a blind spot between the eastern gate and the western gate.

His dry, drunken husk of a master tells him that he may pass for a rich merchant at a distance, never for a noble at close quarters. Jet leaves him with one last handful of coin and a story about making his fortune.

It's a complete lie. He has no need of a fortune. No fortune, no fame, no legacy. He is not even alive. So far as anyone knows, he isn't. Longshot and Smellerbee left him there on his say-so. He saved them and he saved himself, hand over hand, before the earth came crashing down and water came crashing in. Water and Earth cradled him, and he remembers almost drowning, heavy weights dragging him into the deep before a swell of something, he doesn't know what, caught him and propelled him upwards.

It took him a year to claw his way back to health and for each day of his recovery, this is what he focused on.

He throws the iron-tipped rappel up to catch the edge of the wall and he waits. It has taken him two years and he has patience. The bundle on his back is tied with careful precision and nothing will fall out. Nothing will fall apart.

Scaling the wall is easy for someone who used to swing through the trees as if he was born in them. For someone who has had freedom and clean air, the Capital City of the Fire Nation is too closed-in and too hot. It stinks of smoke and sweat and hundreds of years of unquestioned orders.

Things must be as they are.

Jet has never been good with obeying orders. He has always questioned- why? Why is the sky blue? Why are the trees green? Why was I born to this world and not the next? Why did you kill? Why did you die? Why am I here?

He remembers the shock of finding another with the same sense of disconnection. Someone else who was not what he seemed, who questioned, who made choices even when there were no choices to make. And the anger, oh, that anger. Jet had thirsted for that anger.

Why? Why not? How? And who are you?

Not Earth Kingdom. Not a refugee. Not a peasant. Someone who stood still and fought just by choosing to do nothing. Someone who was not what he seemed.

Jet lands in a crouch on the other side of the wall and there is grass beneath the hand with which he steadies himself. He touches it, strangely disoriented by the unfamiliar familiarity of the texture against his fingertips.

His dry, drunken old tutor told him to hide his hands. They are not the hands of a nobleman, he was told. Jet looks at his hand, strong and dark against the dark grass. It is broad and angular. Long, skinny fingers with large joints, deeply scoured lines in the palm. Callused and scarred and ragged.

He will keep his hands to the end, just as they are. They have saved his life times without number and tonight, they will serve him again.

He straightens when there is no shout of discovery, no swarm of guards. There are no blaring sirens, no searching lights, no howls of predators that may roam the parameters.

He allows himself a slow, wide-mouthed smirk. The Fire Lord's palace is badly guarded.

He straightens and makes his way towards the rippling glimmer of water. There is a small pond that he can see beside a tree. He moves slowly, carefully, confident that one wrong footfall can end this night.

But he has reached so far and Jet knows through the self-confidence that serves him better than a shield that he will make it to the end. Tonight is his night.

The pond provides him with a better mirror than he can hope for, until the little turtleducks come paddling up.

Turtleducks, in the Fire Lord's palace. And they are awake, as if used to night visitors even if the hour is not so late.

No, not so late. It cannot be so late. The Fire Lord would not entertain at such hours. Not at nineteen, with an eighteen year old bride.

Jet thinks of the woman who is worthy enough to catch a Fire Lord's eye. She would be no peasant. He is sure of that. She is highly skilled with knives, they say in the City, and he imagines a dark-haired temptress with a blood red mouth. He imagines golden fire eyes and a wicked, easy smile, a dagger ready at her hip. No doubt the smile would turn soft and gentle when it is turned to someone the woman loves but she is of this world, where how you stand and sit and dress can prove your birth back to three generations.

The robes are light for the summer, and they are loose enough to move in. The shoes are carefully selected. He broke into six houses before he found them. They are his size and they're comfortable. Soft-souled. Noble but stealthy.

The Fire Nation nobility are born to be spies and assassins, he thinks. Or freedom fighters.

His whole outfit is rust brown. Red mixed with earth. He chose the colours too, where he could, and he matches it with the ornate gold clasp at his right shoulder.

The pond throws the sparks of light back at him just enough to reach up to the grown out lengths of his hair. Two years, he thinks, it has taken him two years of planning.

His hair is long enough to pull back, to fix into a topknot. He slides the thin gold band around it and the pin that pierces it through will be another weapon should he need one.

Jet sits beside the pond with the turtleducks and slowly recites the names of those who raised him, following that with the names of his freedom fighters. Most of them are now dead, and his fighters are scattered to the four winds.

When he stands he is no longer who he once was and he has only one last skin to shed.

The guards spot a man in rust-coloured robes approach. He is clearly arrived from a different direction. They flex their fingers on their spears but do not lower their weapons.

Jet walks with an easy, loping gait. It is not the walk that his dry and drunken master taught him. It is the way he walks beneath trees in a forest, or through a field of summer wheat. It is the walk of a man who owns nothing and everything, all at once. More to the point, it is the walk of a man who knows where he is and has no thought that his destination will be barred to him.

He sees the guards and there is fear. There is anger and loathing and the urge to kill.

He could do it, he thinks objectively. He can see it all so clearly in his mind's eye. He can see how it will play out and he will go down fighting, in his robes of bloody earth.

The stillness of the night calms him. The light beckons. Jet pauses when he reaches the guards, looks at them slowly and closely and lets them see him, and then he nods and moves through.

They do not stop him. Just as he knew they wouldn't. The clasp he is wearing is an army insignia. That he is not in uniform proclaims him to be an independent agent. In other words, he is a spy or an assassin. Lethal. Connected. And as useful to grapple with as smoke.

He is untouchable now.

He follows the feel of noise as it slices through the air and drains into the walls. Before there is noise, there is the impression of it, the heat of it. He follows the heat and he finds another pair of guards at another set of open doors.

Once again, they say nothing. They do not look at him. They look straight ahead and he passes smoothly through.

Three times this happens, and three times he breaks the defences of the Fire Lord's palace.

The party itself- if it can be called that- has begun. People in uniforms and flowing robes are a sea of red and black and crimson. There are a few in white, where white is the colour of mourning in the Fire Nation. Death has found its way everywhere, even into the land of killers.

Jet doesn't care. Death is ever-present, and he is technically dead. Crushed and drowned beneath the waters of Lake Laogai.

Jet knows that he has been noted, that there are curious glances and glances of surprise. He knows that he looks young to some, weathered to others, too brown, too slender, too raw-boned. He knows his rust brown robes are not a usual colour. He stole them for that purpose.

Jet has never mastered the art of slipping unnoticed through a crowd. He expects the attention, though he does nothing to invite it, and when he has it, he plays to it with a smile in the right direction, a quick assessment in another.

An adviser comes up to him and asks for his invitation.

Jet smiles, his wide, amused smirk, and merely looks down at the flustered official with the easy assurance that those who know him know that he will attend. It is an easy lie; no one knows him. He has been dead for two years and he is no longer the same man.

It should not work. The official should demand his invitation and quietly signal an agent to approach.

Jet has already noticed them. They stand on the edges of the room and watch. They do not participate. And they are too plainly dressed in black.

There is no style to their agents, he thinks. There is no daring, no story.

Jet has no need for fame, fortune or legacy. So he salutes them ironically in turn when the adviser leaves.

But he fails to notice the slender, delicate shape that slides up beside him until it is there, alive and breathing at his elbow.

It is a woman, still half a girl though she is tall for her age and looks taller in her loose black robes and heavy styled hair. She is pale and calm and her dark eyes are steady. She looks at the scene and she looks bored.

"Who are you?" she asks, "You don't have no invitation, do you?"

"I don't know what you mean," he says.

"You don't belong here."

It's a flat statement, not a question. Not an observation. It is spoken as fact, as if to say that the sun rises every morning or that fire burns. There is no denial for such a statement. So he fails to deny it and merely shrugs, as though the girl is free to believe what she wants.

"Why do you think that?" he asks, "Are my clothes not good enough? My manners? Do I smell?"

She turns her whole body to look at him. "That insignia has not been worn for fifty years. It is a relic. Unless this is what your father has passed on to you, you have no cause to wear it."

"Maybe my father did pass it on to me."

"Then who," she asks, "Is your father? And I'll take your name as well."

He turns his head to look at her, up and down. There is nothing erotic in his eyes but he is interested. She is an interesting girl. No beauty, but her face is pretty and her mouth is soft and full. Her dark eyes are calm and alert and he notices how she stands, with her hands tucked into the sleeves of her robes.

He wonders if she is a member of the Imperial Firebenders.

"General Lin Fe was my father. My name is Ren."

"Ren? That's an unusual name."

"My father was an unusual man. He travelled extensively on his campaigns. He was one of the few men who took his family with him. I grew up in the Earth Kingdom colonies and I have only just arrived."

She doesn't change expression. "I only asked for your name, not for a eulogy on your father."

She moves then. And as she turns her head, she says, "Come," with authority that is negligible.

There is no earthly reason why Jet should follow. But he laughs and he follows anyway. He has reached his journey's end, and from now there are only moments to be lived. Second by second, and if he is lucky, another lifetime.

The girl leads him to the side of the room and then opens a door. She stops and looks back, a small, discreet smile of polite watchfulness on her face as she says, "I think it's best if we talk in private."

She precedes him into the room, and he is watching the way that she does not move like the other women who shift around her. She does not sway in the hypnotic rhythm of those who know their charms and are willing to be complimented on them.

There is no posturing in this one. But somehow, her very uniqueness gives her style. Jet's eyes would have slid past her had she not made herself known to him.

She turns them, and her hands come out of her sleeves.

Jet's complaisance drops. She is holding small throwing blades in her hands. They glint wickedly sharp in the candelight.

"It's a confined space," he says, "You'll probably hurt yourself too if you throw those in here."

She smiles again, the same small, discreet smile of polite watchfulness. "I don't think that will happen. I'm pretty good with them."

"So you're going to threaten an unarmed man?"

"That is a stiletto in your hair," she says simply, "I know women who could take down half a battalion with just that."

"Yeah, but that's because the men are too busy watching them fight to fight back. Women have that power," he answers easily, "I don't. I'm not a woman."

"No, you're not. Who are you? The truth, please. Lies are so boring."

"Then you've never lied for the right reasons."

"Let me guess," she says, "Earth Kingdom. Your whole village was burned down and you've come here to kill the Fire Lord in revenge."

"Is it so unoriginal?"

"Yeah. It pretty much is," she tells him.

He can't laugh, not when she has sharp pointed objects in her hand, but the earlier sense of euphoria has not abated, merely calmed. There is a strange apathy about her ability to kill him. He has died twice already, once to himself, and one to those who knew him. That was two years ago and if this is to be his last night in this realm, then he is at peace.

Except for one thing.

"Where is he?" he asks.

"Who?" she counters.

"The Fire Lord. I didn't see him out there. Is his Fire Lady holding him up?"

The girl's dark eyes continue to regard him steadily. "No, I don't think she's that kind of girl."

"What kind of girl is she, then?"

"The dangerous kind. She doesn't like assassins, even if they are inept and under prepared."

"I never said I was an assassin. Actually, I don't think I said I was anything at all except a man named Ren, son of General Lin Fe."

"I have never heard of such a man."

"That's because he used to be around when General Iroh was attacking the walls of Ba Sing Se. General Lin Fe wasn't royalty, like the Crown Prince. He was just a well born man, cruel and evil, with no thought except to do as his nation asked of him. He tore down villages and razed fields. He left thousands without homes, or food, or shelter. And under his command was a band of mounted agents. They called themselves the Rough Rhinos. They pillaged a small village that was out of the way and doing no one any harm. They rode in at dusk and demanded food. When they were refused, they burned the village to the ground. They fired indiscriminately into the crowds and killed as many who were running as they could. That was the legacy of General Lin Fe, who took his family with him on his campaigns and tore apart the families of every Earth Kingdom civilian that he possibly could."

"And you think Zuko is responsible for this?"

Finally, Jet's mouth twists. The name blooms like something dark and sweet inside of him. This girl is keeping him talking, threatening him with weapons in a casual way that says she has not lied- she knows how to use them- but the name brings his whole world crashing down to a single point of light. A single vision. Whether it is a vision of life or death does not matter; it is a vision of the future. It may last the next minute or next century.

Jet doesn't care. His blood thrums in his veins and there are turtleducks somewhere in the grounds of the Fire Lord's palace.

"No," he says flippantly, "But I want to talk to a man named Li."

"Who's that?"

"Your Fire Lord knows him."

"The Fire Lord will not speak with assassins."

"So he sends a girl in to do his dirty work? Not the _Zuko_ I knew."

The movement is so graceful, so quick, he barely has time to think before the blades in her hand are pinning his right sleeve to the wall. The aim is accurate; she doesn't draw so much as a scratch on his skin and yet his sleeve is tightly held. The blades themselves are so deep in the wood that it does not seem possible for someone who is so slender and delicate to throw with such brutality.

Jet is impressed. He struggles once, yanks twice, and then stills himself and waits.

He has waited for two years and he knows it will happen.

She leaves him there, and passes a handspan away to reach the door. He could reach out and grab her, hold her close and even with one arm captured, he is taller than her, he is heavier, and he would bet that he is stronger.

If he is to pass the time in here, he would welcome the company.

But she moves like he does, as if there will be no stopping her, and so he doesn't. He lets her go. She isn't his real target.

The door closes behind her with a soft click.

Jet begins the tedious task of working himself loose. The knives come away one by one with a slow, constant pulling. One blade slices his fingers and he winces and sucks the bloodied wounds. They continue to seep, however, and it takes him twice as long to get the last blade free.

When he is done, he leaves all three blades on the ground and strides to the door. It's locked, but the pin in his hair is just the right size. It does not take him long to pick this lock.

His destiny waits on the other side of the door, and he swings it open so easily, so calmly that he marvels at himself. At his own brash self-confidence. There is fear and adrenaline, but there are no regrets.

This time he finds that the centre of the room has shifted. There is a section just across from him where people keep their distance but still lean towards. And in the heart of that little section is a man in red robes, with dark hair and broad shoulders.

The girl is with him.

Jet wonders if she is his bodyguard and then the disparities slot into place. He congratulates Zuko. The Fire Lady is a surprise, and a good one.

He moves through the crowd with the relative ease of someone who is used to moving around people, with people, coaxing them to follow, inspiring them to obey.

When Zuko turns around there is that scar. The unmistakable, unforgettable scar, slightly worn and slightly faded, but still stretched tight and ugly. The perfect symbol of what the war ended.

It is a crime that such a beautiful face should have been marked by that scar.

Jet has always thought so. Has never questioned it, or doubted it, and he does not apologise for it now.

Zuko's eyes flare golden and watchful. He holds himself alert and ready, wrists slightly raised in the manner of a firebender who senses trouble.

The guards are coming. Jet can hear the sound of boots and armour. The agents are manoeuvring and the Fire Lady herself is no longer smiling, though she must have known that he would free himself if she left one arm loose.

He has no time to second-guess himself, and even if he did he does not want to. This moment is the purest of his life. He worked for two years to get here.

He stops, hands uncurled and held away from his sides to show no weapons. But he does not bow.

"You need better security, Li," he says lightly.

"How did you get in?"

The voice is the same soft gravel.

"I climbed the wall. Dressed under the tree beside the pond. I walked through your palace and none of your guards stopped me. None of your agents challenged me."

Zuko's face tightens. "It's impossible to climb the walls. We have watchers."

Jet smirks. The anger he remembers is missing, gone. There is anger here but it is a pale imitation. What he remembers would have burned him alive. What is before him will never burn him. It will never lash out, except in self-defence, and even then it will do all in its power to protect him.

The girl, on the other hand, is holding her blade with a businesslike care. She will throw to kill. He knows this from the way she is staring at his throat.

"Maybe they found something better to watch, Your Highness." He turns the formality into a joke. No one else is laughing but he cannot stop his smile. He cannot stop the bubble of laughter in his throat. "I have a proposition for you."

Zuko's eyes narrow. "No," he says flatly.

"You don't know what it is, yet."

"I don't need to, Jet."

Zuko moves forward, loosely holding a bending position. There are soldiers in this room, and warriors, and they will fight if their Lord fights. There are guards and agents and a girl with blades hidden somewhere on her person, and Jet has never felt more alive, more at home.

"Do you," he asks gently, "Know a General Lin Fe? Does anyone?" He looks around the room.

A few heads nod, and he watches the slowly dawning recognition on their faces.

"For those of you who didn't, you didn't miss much. He was a cruel, vicious man. He dragged his family to campaigns and they watched while he killed and maimed the innocent, while he destroyed lives. He had three sons- Chan Wei, Ren and Lao." Jet looks at Zuko, the smirk changing to a quizzical grin. "We've got a lot in common. I'm Ren."

Zuko stares at him as if he's grown a second head and then the look of disbelief slams over his features.

"Do you think Smellerbee was named Smellerbee? Or Longshot was called Longshot? We always had other names. Because names are precious. They tell you who you are, where you come from. They hold your history. Zuko. That name is history."

"You will not dare to speak those lies with such insolence," an agent growls, and he leaps.

Jet does not need the pin in his hair to kill him. He uses the force of the attack to drive his fist into the agent's stomach, and then slams an elbow down on his bowed neck.

He does not think the bones crack but anything could happen in a fight. In a fight, he could pick up a knife and stab his own father. In a fight, the people who had shown him the kindness of true parents could vanish in a blazing inferno.

He is ready for more but they never come. Zuko has his hands up, and is holding them at bay, commanding silently in a way that looks natural, effortless. The hands drop as Jet straightens.

This time he does not smile, nor does he smirk. His muscles remember the rigid lessons of childhood. And he holds himself with military precision as he offers up a warrior's greeting.

"My name is Ren, son of General Lin Fe, grandson of Goruk, a noble of this Court. I could not serve the Nation in its bloodshed and war, but I offer to serve its peace. And more," he cannot resist the leer, "I pledge my services to the Fire Lord himself, to do with as he wishes."

Li's response to sudden and shocking news would have been rage and reservations. He would have pulled away and walked away. Zuko's response is to stare, first in surprise, and then in consideration.

"And what exactly do you think I'll do with you?" Zuko demands.

"For one thing, you need someone who understands security. Someone who thinks like an assassin and knows what to guard against."

Zuko shoots a glance at the girl at his side. She has lowered the blade but has not put it away. It is still ready. She looks back at him and there seems to be an unspoken communication.

Jet watches them and his stomach suddenly churns. He knows what he is asking. And he knows what he has pledged. He will never be able to destroy the Fire Lord now. He will serve as Zuko commands, in any way Zuko commands, but that is the pledge. He will have no more forests and no trees. No more fields of summer wheat. And no matter if they are plunged into war tomorrow, and no matter if Jet must take his sword to the innocent, to himself, or to that fascinating Fire Lady, he will do so if his lord commands it.

Jet died under Lake Laogai. The name has served its purpose, as did childhood. Ren must forget now that he was ever so briefly Earth Kingdom.


End file.
